"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,/And what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.//I loafe and invite my soul,/I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass."

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Tonight

At the Trustees opening at ICP. Not the Insane Clown Posse, the other one. AKA “Hiccup.” What was I doing there? Well, I have my connections. And what is the difference between the Trustees opening and the Member’s opening? They remove the appetizers, which weren’t bad -- although the fava spread tasted like it was flavored with lime soda -- before hoi polloi are allowed in. I enjoyed the portraits on the first floor, but I really think history would be served better if Rose Parks wasn’t just referred to as a hardworking seamstress, which she undoubtedly was. But she was also a NAACP member and activist; movements are made of organization, my friends. And let us not forget “Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old activist who was ejected from the [Montgomery] city's buses in almost identical circumstances. But the local civil rights leadership felt Colvin was too dark, too poor and, once she fell pregnant, too compromised to spearhead the kind of struggle they had in mind. And so they dropped her and waited for a better test case.” ( Gary Younge, in The Nation).

The Amelia Earhart exhibit downstairs is also worth a visit. She was one handsome woman. And, seriously, am I supposed to think she wasn’t a Sapphic sister? The leather jackets and tight pants, the short tousled hair, the ties? She looks like she’s stepped out of a rather special Weimar cabaret. How the hell am I going to get to sleep tonight? Aviatrix with a whip, indeed. Speaking of Sapphics, my favorite rhyming scheme, I noted to A how one of the curators was a tall drink of water, perfectly draped in a black dress, and he noted she batted for the other team. And then on the way home, I ran into the lovely M, who’s name I didn’t remember at first (yet the voice was unforgettable,) who told me she and J (of J & J fame) have been plotting to set me up with R. You think you’re confused?